


but sometimes it rhymes

by rain_sleet_snow



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: (for a given definition of canon), Canonical Character Death, During Canon, F/M, Families of Choice, Original Trilogy as History, Past Torture, Rogue One As History, The Force, religious character, starring Kylo Ren as the elephant in the room
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-29
Updated: 2017-01-29
Packaged: 2018-09-20 17:10:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9501827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: This was the trouble, Jyn thought, with living to fight your children’s wars.***Poe Dameron returns from Jakku.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is consistent with _spes semper mihi adest_ , which I also wrote, but you don't need to read that to read this, it should be entirely self-explanatory. Thank you to Celeste for the beta and patient canon corrections!
> 
> I am reasonably sure that I can at least _swear_ competently in Spanish, but as usual, any corrections to the Spanish used here will be gratefully received.

Cassian Andor was there to greet Poe when he made it to D’Qar. Poe genuinely hadn't been expecting that; he'd thought there might be a welcoming committee, but he'd expected a few Rogue Squadron pilots, a great deal of fuss and noise, a lot of informality. Instead the corvette landed on a quiet pad, a little out of the way, and when Poe thanked the pilot and limped off there was only one person waiting for him. There were engineers and kit-haulers around, and Poe saw people he knew, but while they looked at him and smiled and called greetings, nobody came over. It was like they'd been told to give him space.

 

Secretly, Poe was grateful. He was having trouble holding himself together; he knew himself to be filthy, battered and weak from hunger, lack of sleep and the echoes of his torture. Much as he'd looked forward to telling his team that he'd essentially come back from the dead, he didn't think he could cope with a party right now. He didn't think he could cope with anything that wasn't a fresher that ran on real hot water, followed by twelve hours' sleep.

 

Accordingly, he wasn't sure what to do with the unspoken legend walking to meet him.

 

"Poe," Cassian Andor said, having unhurriedly crossed twenty metres of tarmac to meet Poe in the middle. "Well done for coming home."

 

"Thanks," Poe said. "Sir. Colonel. Uh-"

 

"Cassian," said one of the two living members of Rogue One, the Rebellion's sharpest knife, the man in the shadows, the Hero of Scarif. "Today you can call me Cassian."

 

"Uh," Poe repeated. Either he was swaying or D’Qar was rocking beneath his feet. 

 

"Not many people escape from the Empire's destroyers," Cassian elaborated, watching Poe with deceptively mild dark eyes, heavily bracketed by lines from smiling at his partner and squinting through sniper rifles. "And I think we all know the First Order is the Empire by another name. Welcome to an extremely exclusive club, Poe."

 

"Right," Poe said. "Thanks - it's an honour, I mean that, it's an honour."

 

Black clouds were taking over his vision. "I," he said, and shook his head. "I - uh, okay, I think I need to -"

 

Poe felt himself lurch forward, and then his knees went out from underneath him.

 

" _Joder_ ," Cassian said, in tones of resignation, as he staggered under the weight of one broken and exhausted pilot. "You haven't changed since you were six, Poe Dameron, you still don't know when to stop." He heaved the pilot into a better position, where he'd be easier to support, and yelled for an orderly.

 

 

Ten minutes later, Poe – still unconscious - was undergoing a thorough and careful medical examination from Major Kalonia, and Cassian had located General Organa, who was presently having a knock-down drag-out fight with the Senate's Member for Hosnia A. Cassian thought that would be resolved shortly, probably to the detriment of the Member for Hosnia A's blood pressure. Leia had ordered Poe to Jakku herself, and had been privately devastated by his disappearance – mostly, but not only because of what it meant for Poe's mission. That was the trouble with surviving one war, and living to fight a second alongside your friends’ children. Leia Organa had not hesitated to order Poe Dameron into the line of fire, but she had grieved when he had not returned.

 

Cassian tried not to think what Shara Bey would have said about all this, and what Kes Dameron undoubtedly would say. Quite apart from anything else, not long after he had located Leia Organa, Jyn had located him, and the two of them were now sitting side by side in the corridor outside Poe’s room. Cassian hadn’t been Jyn’s partner for thirty years without picking up on the way she thought, and right now, he knew she was thinking about Shara and Kes.

 

Jyn sighed and sat back in her chair. “Do you remember when we went to see them? After Hoth but before Coruscant.”

 

Cassian thought carefully, and then remembered the visit in question. Kes and Shara had taken leave to see Poe after several near-death incidents during the evacuation of Hoth; Cassian and Jyn had joined them briefly, and had taken on a dangerous mission in Imperial City not long afterwards. Cassian dated his first grey hairs from the eight hours Jyn had spent out of contact meeting an informant in Imperial City’s red-light district, but yes, somewhere in those disastrous months he remembered a sunny three days spent on the quiet backwater planet Shara’s parents had raised her and their grandson on. There had been talk of burying Shara there, too, but in the end she’d been laid to rest on Yavin IV.

 

“We gave him a toy X-wing,” Cassian said.

 

“Yes,” Jyn said, and leaned her head against Cassian’s shoulder. He already had an arm around her; he squeezed her shoulders gently and turned his face against her hair, now as grey as Leia’s. Silver, he told her sometimes, like the surface of a moon seen from planet-side.

 

 _That’s no moon_ , Jyn usually replied, and usually, they laughed, with the dark humour of people who had escaped the Death Star’s laser twice, and who had survived captivity on board it.

 

Cassian’s eyes darted up and down the corridor. There was no-one around but the medical droids at the moment, and they had strict confidentiality subroutines. He let out a heavy sigh. “ _Hostia_. We’re too old for this.”  

 

Jyn’s fingers tangled with his. She had sun-spots on the backs of her hands to match the blaster callouses on her palms now, and the skin was finer and more delicate. “That’s my line.” She tightened her grip on him and pressed closer against his side, inadvertently elbowing him. “I thought we agreed.”

 

“I’m not going back on what we said,” Cassian told her, and was silent for a moment. “Do you remember what Bodhi looked like, on Jedha?”

 

“I saw his face for thirty seconds before we left the planet. No.”

 

“Poe’s eyes looked like Bodhi’s, before he focused,” Cassian said, very quietly. “Someone has been inside his head.”

 

Jyn tilted her head to look up at him. “Someone,” she repeated, blue-grey eyes as hard as chromium.

 

Cassian said nothing.

 

Jyn looked back down again, and tucked her head under his chin, shifting her weight onto her right leg so that she turned in closer to him. “Han Solo is still wheeling and dealing across the Retorian system, and he’s older than us.”

 

 By two years, Cassian thought, but it counted. “Solo is mad.”

 

“Totally,” Jyn agreed. “But so are we.”

 

Cassian snorted. He had never considered comparing himself to Solo, for the simple reason that he considered the other man a fickle, selfish waste of space who dragged his feet about anything important but unrewarding. But Jyn did have a point. “True.”

 

“I won’t stop fighting until the last Death Star is gone,” Jyn said. She had said it before.

 

Cassian ran his fingers through her hair. “I’ll be there.”

 

He had said that before, too - and this time he did not try to comfort her by saying that the wisps of hearsay they were urgently investigating were even less than rumour. He had learned his lesson there.

 

Jyn closed her eyes; he could feel her eyelashes flicker against the fine skin of his throat.

 

There was a long silence, and then Major Kalonia appeared. Out of habit, Jyn and Cassian had straightened up as soon as they heard her approaching footsteps.

 

“Well,” Major Kalonia said, eyeing them both with her usual mixture of benevolence and slight suspicion, “he’ll live. He’s had a nasty beating, and I think he’s crashed that ship of his at some point, but he’s mostly just dehydrated, hungry and exhausted. His next of kin need notifying.”

 

“I’ll do it,” Jyn said.

 

“No,” Cassian said. “This is my fault. If Kes is going to shout at anyone, he can shout at me.”

 

   Jyn didn’t contradict him.

 

***

 

When Poe flickered into consciousness there was a woman old enough to be his mother sitting next to his bed. It wasn’t her, though. If it had been Poe would have known he was dead. It was Captain Erso instead, which made Poe suspect that he was about to die instead. She looked quite calm now, sitting cross-legged on a visitor’s chair with a necklace clasped in one hand and her eyes closed for meditation, but her hurricane temper was legendary – and generally provided cover for her partner to murder or blackmail someone quietly on the side.

 

Poe let out an undoubtedly horrible noise and tried to salute.

 

Captain Erso’s steel eyes snapped open, and she reached over to put a hand on his chest, pushing him down. “Stay put, you idiot.”

 

“Sorry,” Poe croaked, “sorry,” and felt tears leaking from his eyes for no good reason.

 

Captain Erso wiped them away with a thumb, and held a glass of water to his mouth. “Stop apologising, Poe. Here. Small sips.”

 

Poe drank. It was harder than he might have expected.

 

“I failed,” he said, his voice a little clearer than before. “I failed, I – I failed.”

 

“You’re alive,” Captain Erso said bluntly, taking the glass of water away. “That’s enough.”

 

“Kylo Ren… I told him.” Poe shook his aching head. “I don’t know what. He didn’t ask questions – he just…”

 

“Ssh.” Captain Erso laid a cool hand on his forehead, gently turning his head this way and that, probably to get a better look at the damage the stormtroopers, then Ren, and then finally the crash on Jakku had done to him. “Shut up. There’s no way to _not_ tell someone like Kylo Ren things. You can get round a Jedi if they’re weak or poorly trained, but Ren…”

 

“He’s not like that,” Poe whispered.

 

Captain Erso shook her head. “No,” she agreed, and sat back. She was fidgeting with her necklace – a transparent lump of crystal she’d been wearing as long as Poe could remember. “I was once interrogated by Darth Vader. I told him everything, too.” Her eyebrows twitched. “Luckily, I didn’t know very much.”

 

Poe said nothing, but watched her face. There had been something he needed to tell her, he thought, and he couldn’t quite remember what it was. Jedi – crystal – Force –

 

“Lor San Tekka is dead,” he said, reluctantly. Lor San Tekka had been a priest of sorts, and in some small, strange ways Poe thought Captain Erso had been a member of his congregation. He was reasonably sure Captain Erso worshipped the Force in some way; he knew that she would sometimes retreat into a corner and meditate. She didn’t really do shrines and had no particular respect for any of the sects that worshipped the Force, although he had once overheard her repeating a mantra. She wasn’t Force-sensitive – not to Poe’s knowledge, anyway, although if anyone could have kept that secret it would have been her. But he had heard Colonel Andor complaining in heavily-accented Alderaanian about her apparently extreme piety, and – more tellingly - he’d seen her sit with Lor San Tekka to meditate, and sometimes to talk about places that no longer existed, like the Jedi Temple in Coruscant, or the Holy City of Jedha.

 

“I know,” Captain Erso said. “We traced you that far.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Poe whispered.

 

“Tell me you’re sorry again and I’ll ship you home to Kes to be shouted at,” Captain Erso informed him.

 

“Right,” Poe said, thinking of what his father must be saying, and wincing. His father had not been pleased when he’d joined the Resistance, but he’d be even less pleased if he found out that Poe had taken on a spy’s mission instead of confining himself to flying X-wings.

 

“Exactly,” Captain Erso said. “He knows you’re alive, by the way. Cassian told him.”

 

“Thanks,” Poe said.

 

“We didn’t get round to telling him you were dead, as it happens. You were pretty prompt, getting off the _Finalizer_. Faster than me and Cassian.”

 

“I found a Bodhi,” Poe said, without thinking about what he was saying.

 

Captain Erso’s eyes narrowed. “You found a body?”

 

“No, I – No. I… A stormtrooper broke me out.”

 

“Bodhi,” Captain Erso repeated, and stared at him. “He was always your favourite.”

 

“He was the pilot,” Poe said, quietly glossing over the number of times he had asked Captain Erso and Colonel Andor for stories about their dead friends. He’d been a child then; he had still called them Jyn and Cassian when they landed on Yavin, generally carrying new scars and a present for Poe. He hadn’t been able to see how hard it was to tell some of those stories, though they had never refused to talk, particularly if Poe asked about Bodhi Rook.

 

Captain Erso cracked one of her rare smiles. “I’m complimenting you on your taste, Poe. Bodhi Rook was the best man I ever knew.” She uncrossed her legs at last and stretched them out before her, hissing slightly as she did so. “So. You found a defector.”

 

“I thought he was going to shoot me,” Poe said, closing his eyes on the memory of Finn’s frightened face. “He dragged me into a cupboard and pulled his helmet off and he said, you can fly, can you fly a TIE fighter. And I said yes – and I asked if he was with the Resistance – he said no, he just. He just said, I’m rescuing you.” Poe swallowed; his throat ached, partly because all of him ached, partly because he wanted to cry. He opened his eyes again. “He was scared, but – he came through.”

 

Captain Erso nodded slightly. Her eyes were fixed on Poe’s face.

 

Poe licked his dry, cracked lips. “We crashed on Jakku. He didn’t - I couldn’t – I couldn’t find him.” Tears stung at the corner of his eyes again.

 

“Go on,” Captain Erso said. Her face was almost soft.

 

“He told me he had no name,” Poe said helplessly. “He told me they called him – FN-2187. I didn’t know stormtroopers didn’t get names.”

 

“The First Order likes its human tools as much as the Empire did,” Captain Erso said. There was a viciousness in her voice; Poe registered the fact that it wasn’t meant for him with gratitude. 

 

“I gave him a name,” Poe said, and now he could hear choking misery in his own voice. “I gave him a name… I called him Finn.”

 

“It was the right thing to do,” Captain Erso said.

 

Poe closed his eyes again. “I left him behind,” he said. “I couldn’t see him anywhere. I could have stayed longer – I could’ve – I just – debris trail a mile long, and I couldn’t see anything, I didn’t...”

 

There was a long silence.

 

“I left him,” Poe said. His voice cracked on the words. “He saved my life. I left him.”

 

“It was the only thing you could have done,” Captain Erso said, her low voice gentle like Poe had never heard it. She held the glass to his lips again; Poe drank, and tasted the distinctive flavour of the sedatives Medical used.

 

 “Hey,” Poe said dizzily. “’S cheating.”

 

 “I am a cheat, Poe Dameron,” Captain Erso said. “Go to sleep.”

 

Poe tried to force his eyelids open, but they were too heavy. He fought to raise himself, but couldn’t. He felt one of his hands being prised carefully open, and then the fingers folded closed again over some small, warm, heavy object, connected to a smooth tough string which Captain Erso looped around his thumb.

 

He heard Captain Erso sigh. “Shara would kill me for this,” she said. “I told her I’d teach you life skills, not how to run to your death.”

 

Poe opened his mouth to say that he was, at thirty-two, old enough to make his own decisions on the subject; but all that came out was a slurred half-word, and he slid into darkness without further protest.

 

***

 

“Major Kalonia says you’re cluttering up her medical bay,” Leia Organa announced, coming to a halt at the foot of Poe’s bed and folding her arms. Leia was dressed in white again. Jyn had thought the days of seeing her wear white outside the festival of remembrance had ended with the signing of the Concordance thirty years ago, but lately Leia wore it to every meeting she had with a member of the Senate, virtual or not. Jyn thought it was some sort of visual cue: _I am Alderaanian, and this dress means I’m here to fuck your shit up_.

 

Or something.

 

“I’m not in the Major’s precious medical bay, general,” Jyn said, propping her feet up on Poe’s bed. He was very still. She wasn’t worried about accidentally kicking him. “This is a private room.”

 

“Ha,” said the last princess of Alderaan, victor of the first Galactic Civil War, and undisputed leader of the Resistance. “You know what I like about you, Erso, it’s your scrupulous attention to hierarchy.”

 

“Thanks, general,” Jyn said, and let herself smile. “You’re my second-favourite pain in the arse.”

 

“I’m flattered,” Leia said, very dryly. “You married your very favourite pain in the arse.”

 

“On some planets,” Jyn said, equally dryly. “About four, I think, and most of a nebula.”

 

“Let me know when you want me to officiate at a ceremony recognised in the rest of the galaxy.”

 

“Never,” Jyn said. “Cassian enjoys keeping people guessing too much.”

 

Leia found another visitor’s chair, and dragged it over. “You mean you enjoy keeping people guessing too much.”

 

“Two minds with but a single thought,” Jyn said, with limited truthfulness. She nodded at Poe. “He’s out for the foreseeable. He was getting wound up and I sedated him.”

 

“I’m sure Major Kalonia is thrilled.” Leia sighed and straightened her spine. “What’s the damage, Captain Erso?”

 

“He’s been beaten up,” Jyn said. “He’s crashed his ship. He’s had a twisted Jedi inside his head. He’s a bit of a mess, but he’ll heal, and he’ll fly.”

 

Leia flinched. Jyn pretended she hadn’t seen anything.

 

“I wouldn’t put him on an intelligence run again,” Jyn said. “He did well to survive this one. I think it’s enough. Cassian agrees with me.”

 

Leia nodded. “The map?”

 

“Damned if I know.” Jyn twisted her fingers in the loop of twine protruding from Poe’s closed fist. “His droid is missing, though. Poe will have given the map to the droid, if I know him at all. Cassian has people looking for it.”

 

Leia nodded, and then her famously beautiful – and famously merciless – brown eyes fell and caught on Poe’s hand, before sliding up to glance at Jyn’s neck.

 

“You took off your necklace,” she said.

 

“Yeah, well,” Jyn said.

 

There was a long silence. A droid wheeled in, plugged into a bank of sensors next to Poe’s bed, then bleeped and wheeled out again.

 

“I am one with the Force and the Force is with me,” Leia said, without looking at Jyn.

 

“Yeah, well,” Jyn repeated.

 

“Yeah, well, _general_ ,” Leia corrected, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.

 

Jyn grinned. “That.” She let go of the twine, leaving the necklace in Poe’s safe hands. “The Force must have been with him, to pull off a trick like that. He found a defector. Do you know how long we’ve been trying to get members of the First Order to turn? They don’t do it. But a stormtrooper walked right up to Poe Dameron, and let him out of his cell.”

 

“He’s not Force-sensitive. I’d know.”

 

“Neither am I,” Jyn said.

 

“You’ve been wearing a kyber crystal around your neck for fifty years.” Leia folded her hands. “Where is this defector now?”

 

“Probably dead,” Jyn said. “I’ll have someone keep an ear out. But he crashed with Poe and Poe couldn’t find him in the wreckage.”  


“Pity,” Leia said absently.   

 

Jyn got to her feet. “You never know,” she said. “He might have survived.”

 

“Well,” Leia said, tapping her fingers on the metal bars on either side of Poe’s bed. “See if you can find him, Captain Erso.”

 

“I’ll do my best, General Organa,” Jyn said, flicking an exceptionally lax salute.

 

“And send Kaydel down here,” Leia said, her eyes on Poe. “I think I’ll work here, for a bit.”  


“Sure,” Jyn said, and left.

 

She caught one glimpse of Leia watching Poe intently before she closed the door behind her. Leia’s eyes were troubled, and there was something on her face that looked like guilt. You might never spot it – but Jyn had known Leia Organa for thirty years, and while she didn’t understand her as well as Cassian did, she knew Leia found her easier to talk to in some ways.

 

This was the trouble, Jyn thought, going to dig up Kaydel Ko Connix and send her to the medical bay, with living to fight your children’s wars.  


End file.
